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The UDL Guidelines and Checkpoints – Version 2.0

A description of the principles along with examples can be found at in the right hand bar.

Page 2……..Representation

Page 5……..Expression

Page 7……..Engagement

How to Read this Document

The UDL Principles are underlined and bold (and in orange)

The Guidelines are italicized and bold (and highlighted in yellow)

The Checkpoints are bold (and in green)

  • The bulleted items are ideas listed under each checkpoint (and in black)


Provide Multiple Means of Representation

Provide options for perception

Offers ways that customize the display of information

Information should be displayed in a flexible format so that the following perceptual features can be varied:

  • the size of text or images
  • the contrast between background and text or image
  • the volume or rate of speech or sound
  • the color used for information or emphasis
  • the speed or timing of video, animation, sound, simulations, etc.
  • the layout of visual or other elements
  • the font used for print material

Offer alternatives for auditory information

  • Use text equivalents in the form of captions or automated speech-to-text (voice recognition) for spoken language
  • Provide visual diagrams, charts, notations or music or sound
  • Provide written transcripts for videos or auditory clips
  • Use visual analogues to represent emphasis and prosody (e.g., emoticons, symbols, or images)
  • Provide visual and/or emotional description for musical interpretation

Offer alternatives for visual information

  • Provide descriptions (text or spoken) for all images, graphics, video, or animations
  • Use touch equivalents (tactile graphics or objects of reference) for key visuals that represent concepts
  • Provide physical objects and spatial models to convey perspective or interaction
  • Provide auditory cues for key concepts and transitions in visual information

Provide options for language, mathematical expression, and symbols

Clarify vocabulary and symbols

  • Pre-teach vocabulary and symbols, especially in ways that promote connection to the learners' experience and prior knowledge
  • Highlight how complex terms, expressions, or equations are composed of simpler words or symbols (e.g., "power-less-ness")
  • Embed support for vocabulary and symbols within the text (e.g., hyper-links or footnotes to definitions, explanations, illustrations, previous coverage, translations)
  • Embed support for unfamiliar references within the text (e.g., domainspecific notation, lesser known properties and theorems, idioms, academic language, figurative language, mathematical language, jargon, archaic language, colloquialism, and dialect)

Clarify syntax and structure

  • Clarify unfamiliar syntax (in language or in math formulas) or underlying structure (in diagrams, graphs, illustrations, extended expositions, or narratives) through alternatives that:
  • Highlight structural relations or make them more explicit
  • Make connections to previously learned structures
  • Make relationships between elements explicit (e.g., highlighting the transition words in an essay, links between ideas in a concept map, etc.)

Supporting decoding text, mathematical notation, and symbols

  • Allow the use of Text-to-Speech
  • Use automatic voicing with digital mathematical notation (Math ML)
  • Use digital text with accompanying human voice recording (e.g., Daisy Talking Books)
  • Allow for flexibility and easy access to multiple representations of notation where appropriate (e.g., formulas, work problems, graphs)
  • Offer clarification of notation through lists of key terms

Promote understanding across languages

  • Make all key information in the dominant language (e.g., English) also available in first languages (e.g., Spanish) for learners with limited-English proficiency and in ASL for students who are deaf
  • Link key vocabulary words to definitions and pronunciations in both dominant and heritage languages
  • Define domain-specific vocabulary (e.g., "map key" in social studies) using both domain-specific and common terms
  • Provide electronic translation tools or links to multilingual glossaries on the web
  • Embed visual, non-linguistic supports for vocabulary clarification (pictures, videos, etc)

Illustrate through multiple media

  • Present key concepts in one form of symbolic representation (e.g., an expository text or a math equation) with an alternative form (e.g., an illustration, dance/movement, diagram, table, model, video, comic strip, storyboard, photograph, animation, physical or virtual manipulative)
  • Make explicit links between information provided in texts and any accompanying representation of that information in illustrations, charts, or diagrams

Provide options for comprehension

Activate or supply background knowledge

  • Anchor instruction by linking to and activating relevant prior knowledge (e.g., using visual imagery, concept anchoring, or concept mastery routines)
  • Use advanced organizers (e.g., KWL methods, concept maps)
  • Pre-teach critical prerequisite concepts through demonstration or models
  • Bridgeconcepts with relevant analogies and metaphors
  • Make explicit cross-curricular connections (e.g., teaching literacy strategies in the social studies classroom)

Highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships

  • Highlight or emphasize key elements in text, graphics, diagrams, formulas
  • Use outlines, graphic organizers, unit organizer routines, concept organizer routines, and concept mastery routines to emphasize key ideas and relationships
  • Use multiple examples and non-examples to emphasize critical features
  • Use cues and prompts to draw attention to critical features
  • Highlight previously learned skills that can be used to solve unfamiliar problems

Guide information processing, visualization, and manipulation

  • Give explicit prompts for each step in a sequential process
  • Provide options for organizational methods and approaches (tables and algorithms for processing mathematical operations)
  • Provide interactive models that guide exploration and new understandings
  • Provide multiple entry points to a lesson and optional pathways through content (e.g., exploring big ideas through dramatic works, arts and literature, film and media)
  • Progressively release of information (e.g., sequential highlighting)
  • Remove unnecessary distractions unless they are essential to the instructional goal

Maximize transfer and generalization

  • Provide checklists, organizers, sticky notes, electronic reminders
  • Prompt the use of mnemonic strategies and devices (e.g., visual imagery, paraphrasing strategies, method of loci, etc.)
  • Incorporate explicit opportunities for review and practice
  • Provide templates, graphic organizers, concept maps to support note-taking
  • Provide scaffolds that connect new information to prior knowledge (e.g., word webs, half-full concept maps)
  • Embed new ideas in familiar ideas and contexts (e.g., use of analogy, metaphor, drama, music, film, etc.)
  • Provide explicit, supported opportunities to generalize learning to new situations (e.g., different types of problems that can be solved with linear equations, using physics principles to build a playground)
  • Offer opportunities over time to revisit key ideas and linkages between ideas

Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression

Provide options for physical action

Vary the methods for response and navigation

  • Provide alternatives in the requirements for rate, timing, speed, and range of motor action required to interact with instructional materials, physical manipulatives, and technologies
  • Provide alternatives for physically responding to or indicating selections (e.g., alternatives to marking with pen and pencil, alternatives to mouse control)
  • Provide alternatives for physically interacting with materials by hand, voice, single switch, joystick, keyboard, or adapter keyboard

Optimize access to tools and assistive technologies

  • Provide alternate keyboard commands for mouse action
  • Build switch and scanning options for increased independent access and keyboard alternatives
  • Provide access to alternative keyboards
  • Customized overlays for touch screens and keyboards
  • Select software that works seamlessly with keyboard alternatives and alt keys

Provide options for expression and communication

Use multiple media for communication

  • Composing in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, design, film, music, dance/movement, visual art, sculpture or video
  • Use physical manipulatives (e.g., blocks, 3D models, base-ten blocks)
  • Use social media and interactive web tools (e.g., discussion forums, chats, web design, annotation tools, storyboards, comic strips, animation presentations)
  • Compose in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, comics, storyboards, design, film, music, visual art, sculpture, or video
  • Solve problems using a variety of strategies

Use multiple tools for composition and problem solving

  • Provide spellcheckers, grammar checkers, word-prediction software
  • Provide Text-to-Speech software (voice recognition), human dictation, recording
  • Provide calculators, graphing calculators, geometric sketchpads, or pre-formatted graph paper
  • Provide sentence starters or sentence strips
  • Use story webs, outlining tools, concept-mapping tools
  • Provide Computer-Aided-Design (CAD), music-notation (writing) software, or mathematical notation software
  • Provide virtual or concrete mathematics manipulatives (e.g., base-10 blocks, algebra blocks)
  • Use web applications (e.g., wikis, animation, presentation)

Build in fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance

  • Provide differentiated models to emulate (i.e., models that demonstrate the same outcomes but use differing approaches, strategies, skills, etc.)
  • Provide differentiated mentors (i.e., teachers/tutors who use different approaches to motivate, guide, give feedback, or inform)
  • Provide scaffolds that can be gradually released with increasing independence and skills (e.g., embedded into digital reading and writing software)
  • Provide multiple examples of novel solutions to authentic problems

Provide options for executive functions

Guide appropriate goal-setting

  • Provide prompts and scaffolds to estimate effort, resources, and difficulty
  • Provide models or examples of the process and product of goal-setting
  • Provide guides and checklists for scaffolding goal-setting
  • Post goals, objectives, and schedules in an obvious place

Support planning and strategy development

  • Embed prompts to “stop and think” before acting as well as adequate space
  • Embed prompts to “show and explain your work” (e.g., portfolio review, art critiques)
  • Provide checklists and project-planning templates for understanding the problem, setting up priorities, sequences, and schedules of steps
  • Embed coaches or mentors that model think-alouds of the process
  • Provide guides for breaking long-term goals into reachable, short-term objectives

Facilitate managing information and resources

  • Provide graphic organizers and templates for collecting data and organizing information
  • Embed prompts for categorizing and systematizing
  • Provide checklists and guides for note-taking

Enhance capacity for monitoring progress

  • Ask questions to guide self-monitoring and reflection
  • Show representations of progress (e.g., before and after photos, graphs and charts showing progress over time, process portfolios)
  • Use templates that guide self-reflection on quality and completeness
  • Provide differentiated models of self-assessment strategies (e.g., role-playing, video reviews, peer feedback)
  • Use differentiated models of self-assessment strategies (e.g., role-playing, video reviews, peer feedback)
  • Use of assessment checklists, scoring rubrics, and multiple examples of annotate student work/performance examples.

Provide Multiple Means of Engagement

Provide options for recruiting interest

Optimize individual choice and autonomy

  • Provide learners as much discretion and autonomy as possible by providing choices in such things as:
  • the level of perceived challenge
  • the type of rewards or recognition available
  • the context or content used for practicing and assessing skills
  • the tools used for information gathering or production
  • the color, design, or graphics of layouts, etc.
  • the sequence or timing for completion of subcomponents in tasks

Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity

  • Vary activities and sources of information so that they can be:
  • personalized and contextualized to learners’ lives
  • socially relevant
  • age and ability appropriate
  • appropriate for different racial, cultural, ethnic, and gender groups
  • Design activities so that outcomes are authentic, communicate to real audiences, and reflect a purpose that is clear to the participants
  • Provide tasks that allow for active participation, exploration, and experimentation
  • Invite personal response, evaluation, and self-reflection to content and activities
  • Include activities that foster the use of imagination to solve novel and relevant problems, or make sense of complex ideas in creative ways.

Minimize threats and distractions

  • Create an accepting and supportive classroom climate
  • Vary the level of novelty or risk:
  • Charts, calendars, schedules, visible timers, cues, etc., that can increase the predictability of daily activities and transitions
  • Creation of class routines
  • Alerts and previews that can help students anticipate and prepare for changes in activities, schedules, novel events
  • Options that can, in contrast to the above, maximize the unexpected, surprising, or novel in highly routinized activities
  • Vary the level of sensory stimulation:
  • Variation in the presence of background noise or visual stimulation, noise buffers, optional headphones, number of features or items presented at one time
  • Variationin pace of work, length of work sessions, availability of breaks or time-outs, timing or sequence of activities
  • Vary the social demands required for learning or performance, the perceived level of support and protection, the requirements for public display and evaluation
  • Involve all participants in whole class discussions

Provide options for sustaining effort and persistence

Heighten salience of goals and objectives

  • Prompt or requirement to explicitly formulate or restate goal
  • Display the goal in multiple ways
  • Encourage division of long-term goals into short-term objectives
  • Demonstrate the use of hand-held or computer-based scheduling tools
  • Use prompts or scaffolds for visualizing desired outcome
  • Engage learners in assessment discussions of what constitutes excellence and generate relevant examples that connect to their cultural background and interests

Vary demands and resources to optimize challenge

  • Differentiate the degree of difficulty or complexity within which core activities can be completed
  • Provide alternatives in the permissible tools and scaffolds
  • Vary the degrees of freedom for acceptable performance
  • Emphasize process, effort, improvement in meeting standards as alternatives to external evaluation and competition

Foster collaboration and communication

  • Create cooperative learning groups with clear goals, roles, and responsibilities
  • Create school-wide programs of positive behavior support with differentiated objectives and supports
  • Provide prompts that guide students in when and how to ask peers and/or teachers for help
  • Encourage and support opportunities to peer interactions and supports(e.g., peer tutors)
  • Construct communities of learners engaged in common interests or activities
  • Create expectations for group work (e.g., rubrics, norms, etc)

Increase mastery-oriented feedback

  • Provide feedback that encourages perseverance, focuses on development of efficacy and self-awareness, and encourages the use of specific supports and strategies in the face of challenge
  • Provide feedback that emphasizes effort, improvement, and achieving a standard, rather than relative performance
  • Provide feedback that is frequent, timely, and specific
  • Provide feedback that is substantive and informative rather than comparative or competitive
  • Provide feedback that models how to incorporate evaluation, including errors and wrong answers, into positive strategies for future success

Provide options for self-regulation

Promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation

  • Provide prompts, reminders, guides, rubrics, checklists that focus on:
  • self-regulatory goals, like reducing the frequency of aggressive outbursts in response to frustration
  • increasing the length of on-task task orientation in the face of distractions
  • elevating the frequency of self-reflection and self-reinforcement
  • Provide coaches, mentors, or agents that model the process of setting personally appropriate goals that take into account both strengths and weaknesses
  • Support activities that encourage self-reflection and identification of personal goals

Facilitate personal coping skills and strategies

  • Provide differentiated models, scaffolds, and feedback for:
  • managing frustration
  • seeking external emotional support
  • developing internal controls and coping skills
  • appropriately handling subject specific phobias and judgments of “natural” aptitude (e.g., “how can I improve on the areas I am struggling in?” rather than “I am not good at math”)
  • use real life situations or simulations to demonstrate coping skills

Develop self-assessment and reflection

  • Offer devices, aids, or charts are available to assist individuals in learning to collect, chart, and display data from their own behavior for the purpose of monitoring changes in those behaviors
  • Use activities that include a means by which learners get feedback and have access to alternative scaffolds (e.g., charts, templates, feedback displays) that support them in understanding their progress in a way that is clear and timely